A (Long) Tale of Two Leaders: Charting the Spatial and Sectoral Roles of the West and China in Shaping Past, Present and Future Economic Globalization(s)

Chen Xiangming ()
Additional contact information
Chen Xiangming: Urban Studies, International Studies, Sociology, Trinity College, Hartford, CT, USA

New Global Studies, 2023, vol. 17, issue 3, 291-323

Abstract: Globalization has run into two intersected momentous shifts over the past decade. One is an accelerating retreat in the Western-led economic globalization. The other is the continued surge of China as a leader of alternative economic globalization, via the Belt and Road Initiative. These two powerful trends are complicated by COVID-19 and the Ukraine war with their disruptions of global geopolitics, plus a potential technological decoupling between China and the United States as great-power rivals. This unprecedented combination of challenges and crises occasions a fresh analysis of the roles of the West versus China in shaping economic globalization past and present. Against the state-centric approach to globalization, I develop a historically-informed framework to couple spatial and sectoral analyses of the trajectories of economic globalization shaped by the West and China. I first examine the cross-regional dimensions of economic globalization across Eurasia featuring China’s primary role in driving the China-Europe Freight Train. I then explore China’s exceptional strength in delivering overseas infrastructure projects, as embodied by the China-Laos Railway, relative to the West’s sectoral advantages bearing on economic globalization. Lastly, I summarily discuss the past and present roles of the West versus China in producing new divergence in future economic globalization.

Keywords: The West; Silk Road; China; Belt and Road Initiative; spatial connectivity; economic globalization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1515/ngs-2022-0002 (text/html)
For access to full text, subscription to the journal or payment for the individual article is required.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bpj:nglost:v:17:y:2023:i:3:p:291-323:n:1

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.degruyter.com/journal/key/ngs/html

DOI: 10.1515/ngs-2022-0002

Access Statistics for this article

New Global Studies is currently edited by Nayan Chanda, Akira Iriye and Saskia Sassen

More articles in New Global Studies from De Gruyter
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Peter Golla ().